10.3.9 to 10.5.1 - use Migration Assistant?

On Sep 7, 2008, at 1:12 PM, Roger Henriques wrote:

> If you use Parallels, it has its own version of a migration
> assistant, which pulled everything off my PC laptop XP pro - XP pro
> without a hitch. As far as I know, you can't do this with Boot Camp,
> but if you can figure out how, I'd love to hear of it.

Can you do that with VMware Fusion?

sims

--On September 7, 2008 4:12:32 AM -0700 Roger Henriques <listsrhen.com>
wrote:

> If you use Parallels, it has its own version of a migration
> assistant, which pulled everything off my PC laptop XP pro - XP pro
> without a hitch. As far as I know, you can't do this with Boot Camp,
> but if you can figure out how, I'd love to hear of it.

WIndows XP has a tool built in, not as nice as Migration Assistant, called
FIle Transfer and Settings Wizard:

<http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457074.aspx>

Vista changed the name to the "User State Migration Tool" because that's so
much easier to remember. And Microsoft of course uses the abbreviation USMT
for it, all the time.

<http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722032.aspx>

On 9/7/08 7:12 AM, "Chris Devers" <cdeverspobox.com> wrote:

> In nearly all cases, Migration Assistant Just works. Really.
>
> Seriously, don't worry about it. Just use it & go.

Yeah...the only problems I ever see is on new laptops, if you run it before
you can log in the first time, because they like to go to sleep. Once I
change the energy saver settings, it just works.

Nothing's perfect, but MA works a lot better than what I'm seeing here.

--
John C. Welch

While I successfully migrated from a G4 Gigabit Ethernet already running Leopard to a new 24" iMac 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme machine, for those migrating from earlier OSs, http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1872713 might be of some use.

Chris Devers wrote:
> This whole thread is complete nonsense.
>
> In the *overwhelming* majority of cases, Migration Assistant works fine.
>
> Fire up the new Mac, put the old one in Firewire target mode, tether
> them together, and off you go.
>
> I've done this hundreds of times, and as long as the old computer is
> reasonably recent (at least 10.2/Jaguar, which is something like five
> years old now), it nearly always works fine, no muss, no fuss. Done.
>
> The only times I've seen problems have been when either the old Mac was
> running OS9 or (maybe) one of the earliest OSX releases, or the old Mac
> was already having hardware problems such as a flaky hard drive, in
> which case there were going to be headaches no matter what you did.
>
> In nearly all cases, Migration Assistant Just works. Really.
>
> Seriously, don't worry about it. Just use it & go.

You're right. It works for most folks. The problems discussed by some of us happen to a few people and it's hard to predict when they occur. But when they do, I and others are the ones who get the call. Old drivers for mice, SCSI, scanners, etc... are a big deal. And when going 2 major steps you're more likely to see such things.

So I guess the issue is do you have things plugged in that your bought more than a year or so ago? If so look at removing the software for said items before doing the OS migration. Then go find drivers for the "old stuff" and before plugging said items back in. Past that you almost have to be a Mac OS Admin to figure it out.

David

Not so fast Mr Henriques!

About a year ago I wanted to migrate from my G4/AGP to a new iMac Intel Core Duo, both under Tiger. Migration assistant mucked up everything several times (if only because different system versions). I finally resorted to installing on the iMac a new system and then dragging files in /User on my G4 by hand. Yeah, Yeah, I know: I shouldn't have. But as he says "What else?"

On Sep 8, 2008, at 06:31, eytan wrote:

> Not so fast Mr Henriques!
>
> About a year ago I wanted to migrate from my G4/AGP to a new iMac
> Intel Core Duo, both under Tiger. Migration assistant mucked up
> everything several times (if only because different system
> versions). I finally resorted to installing on the iMac a new system
> and then dragging files in /User on my G4 by hand. Yeah, Yeah, I
> know: I shouldn't have. But as he says "What else?"

Did you migrate *everything* or just user files? Almost all of the
Migration Assistant "problems" I've heard about involved a user who
migrated old SCSI drivers or other cruft that should have been left
behind.

Migrating users, home directories, and network settings very, very
rarely causes any issue at all. The rest should really be reinstalled
anyway; although one can drag and drop some applications I personally
recommend against this. Anything older than 6 months probably has an
updated version that can be downloaded; and the serial number/
registration stuff frequently gets moved along with the home
directories.

On Sep 7, 2008, at 11:17 AM, Kevin van Haaren wrote:

> Windows XP has a tool built in, not as nice as Migration Assistant,
> called
> File Transfer and Settings Wizard:
>
> <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457074.aspx>
>
> Vista changed the name to the "User State Migration Tool" because
> that's so
> much easier to remember. And Microsoft of course uses the
> abbreviation USMT
> for it, all the time.
>
> <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722032.aspx>

How funny that the first time I see this recommended, it is on a Mac-
oriented mailing list.

I've asked a number of Windows supporters about these tools. Couldn't
find one who recommended it. Most of them seemed to have not tried
it, out of instinctual distrust.

-Andrew